Know your numbers – test your marketing maths

Fruitful marketing is marketing that yields measurable results, and has an impact on your long-term profitability. In your business that might involve driving traffic to your website, increasing engagement with your social media followers, improving responses to direct mail, advertising or email campaigns, or some other goal to help sustain or grow your business. Fruitful marketing is about raising awareness, building profile, engaging people and ultimately generating satisfying and sustainable sales. The first step in developing a fruitful marketing strategy is to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound) goals and work out what KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) you need to track to measure your progress and success.

Fruitful marketing is partly an art. We need to get better at articulating our core messages to our target audience through the use of appropriate and eye-catching images, whether that is photography, illustration or other graphics. And we can improve our copywriting- ensuring that the words we use to craft our written communications are powerful and effective at positioning us in the way we wish to be perceived.

But there is also a science to fruitful marketing, and this involves some maths. We need to crunch the numerical, statistical data we have available through Google Analytics, social media and email marketing analytics. We can research our market by conducting surveys, reading reports and running A/B campaign testing. And we can look at our sales reports and CRM systems to identify patterns and help forecast the future.

Have you set you some SMART marketing goals for your 2016 marketing strategy? Do you know what KPIs to help track your progress and measure success this year? Will this be a fruitful year for you and your business? If you haven’t already, take advantage of what can be a quiet time of year for many, by stepping back from the day-to-day tasks to look at your numbers and do some marketing maths!

Want a hand getting to grips with your marketing maths or setting some SMART targets to make your marketing more fruitful? Sign-up for fortnightly #FruitfulFriday tips and support or drop me a line with the contact form at www.getfruitfulmarketing.com.